It's been several days since I posted about my family's trip to the Atlantic Coast earlier this month. In an earlier post I talked about Ocean Tides. Here I want to focus on some of the disadvantages of the beach. Don't get me wrong, this was a fantastic trip, but the beach does have its disadvantages. Here are two that my daughters and I picked up.
1. Salt water. This was the first experience with salt water for both of my daughters. It's salt water, so obviously it tastes salty, or icky depending on your age. My one year old scrunched up her face after the first taste! The salt water also stings your eyes. My daughters didn't have to worry about this because they are a bit too young to be jumping into the waves. I'm thankful for this too because I can only imagine the temper tantrums if they did get salt in their eyes. If you are ever on an ocean beach, take time to explain why the water is salty and different from regular water. Not sure why? Here's a nice explanation that includes an experiment to try. I think I need to add this to this summer's activity list.
2. Sand. EVERYWHERE! And I'm not just talking about sand on the beach. This is probably less of a problem if you have older kids, but mine are 5 and 1 and they ended up with sand everywhere. Despite multiple showers, they still had a few grains of sand in their hair when we made it back home. Our beach chair bags were full of sand. On one of our trips to the beach I let my kids bury me in sand. It sounded cool at the time, but sand grains stuck to every inch of my body. After taking a shower I thought that I removed all the sand, only to look at my arms and still see sand grains everywhere. It took 3 showers to remove them all! I did a bit of research and supposedly using baby powder works very well to remove sand. I'll have to try that the next time we go to the beach.
The beach vacation was fantastic and there were opportunities to discuss science with my kids, but I could have done without the salt water and especially the sand. Then again, it's not much of a beach without sand!
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